edyong

Profile picture for user edyong
Ed Yong

Award-winning science writer who reports for the Atlantic. His first book, I Contain Multitudes, about the amazing partnerships between microbes and animals, was published in August 2016. His writing has also appeared in National Geographic, the New YorkerWired, the New York TimesNatureNew ScientistScientific American, and more.

What others are saying...

"One of the best sites for in-depth analysis of interesting scientific papers" - The Times

"A consistently illuminating home for long, thoughtful, and thorough explorations of science news" - National Association of Science Writers

Posts by this author

February 28, 2010
We've all experienced the agonising wait for feedback, whether it's for exam grades, news from a job interview, or results from a grant application. These verdicts can have a massive influence in our lives but they can often take weeks or even months to arrive. And that's a big problem, according…
February 25, 2010
Wow. The nominations for the first ever Research Blogging Awards are in! The awards were created to "honor the outstanding bloggers who discuss peer-reviewed research". Nominations were sent in by readers and an panel of judges have selected the finalists. Voting begins in a week's time and…
February 25, 2010
Take a look at these two fish. At first glance, they seem incredibly similar but in fact, they belong to two separate species. The one on the top is an Ambon damselfish (Pomacentrus amboinensis) and the one on the bottom is a lemon damselfish (P.moluccensis). If the distinction is hard for us to…
February 24, 2010
I can't find the paper you've written about and your link doesn't work. What's going on?  I keep having to answer this question and it's getting tiresome (although, as we'll see, this no fault of the people who ask it). This post is borne of that frustration. At the bottom of every piece I write…
February 24, 2010
This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. We humans aren't used to having our intelligence challenged. Among the animal kingdom, we hold no records for speed, strength or size but our vaunted mental abilities are unparalleled. But research from…
February 23, 2010
I grew up in the days of the SNES and the Sega Megadrive. Even then, furious debates would rage about the harm (or lack thereof) that video games would inflict on growing children. A few decades later, little has changed. The debate still rages, fuelled more by the wisdom of repugnance than by data…
February 22, 2010
An assortment of tree-living mammals In The Descent of Man, Darwin talked about the benefits of life among the treetops, citing the "power of quickly climbing trees, so as to escape from enemies". Around 140 years later, these benefits have been confirmed by Milena Shattuck and Scott Williams from…
February 21, 2010
Whiptail lizards are a fairly ordinary-looking bunch, but some species are among the strangest animals around. You might not be able to work out why at first glance, but looking at their genes soon reveals their secret - they're all female, every single one. A third of whiptails have done away with…
February 19, 2010
It's not every day that you hear about spy missions that involve a lack of sex, but clearly parasitic wasps don't pay much attention to Hollywood clichés. These insects merge the thriller, science-fiction and horror genres, They lay their eggs inside other animals, turning them into slaves and…
February 18, 2010
This post is written by a special guest - Ivan Oransky, executive editor at Reuters Health, who I had the pleasure of meeting in person at Science Online 2010. I was delighted when Ivan accepted my invitation to follow up a recent Twitter exchange with a guest-post, and shocked that he even turned…
February 17, 2010
Meet !Gubi, the tribal elder of a group of Bushmen (or Khoisan), one of the oldest known human lineages. He lives the life of a hunter-gatherer in the Namibian part of the Kalahari Desert. But he also has a strange connection to James Watson, the British American scientist who helped to discover…
February 16, 2010
According to Sitemeter, Not Exactly Rocket Science passed 2,000,000 page views today!!! Virtual hugs, high-fives and fist-bumps all round. As near as I can make out, the hit that did it came from Israel and was directed to yesterday's autism post via Stumbleupon. A quick retrospective calculation…
February 16, 2010
All of our cells are staffed by armies of executioners. They are usually restrained but when unleashed, they can set off a fatal chain reaction that kills the cell. This suicide squad does away with billions of cells every day. It helps to balance the production of new cells with the loss of old…
February 15, 2010
The social interactions that come naturally to most people are difficult for people with autism and Asperger syndrome. Simple matters like making eye contact, reading expressions and working out what someone else is thinking can be big challenges, even for "high-functioning" and intelligent…
February 14, 2010
Millions of people in Latin America have been invade by a parasite - a trypanosome called Trypanosome cruzi. They are passed on through the bite of the blood-sucking assassin bug and they cause Chagas disease, a potentially fatal illness that affects the heart and digestive system. The infections…
February 11, 2010
Bees can communicate with each other using the famous "waggle dance". With special figure-of-eight gyrations, they can accurately tell other hive-mates about the location of nectar sources. Karl von Frisch translated the waggle dance decades ago but it's just a small part of bee communication. As…
February 10, 2010
Meet "Inuk". He is the ninth human to have their entire genome sequenced but unlike the previous eight, he has been dead for some 4,000 years old. Even so, DNA samples from a tuft of his frozen hair have revealed much about his appearance and his ancestry. Inuk had brown eyes and brown skin. His…
February 9, 2010
Mothers can teach their children much about the world, but some mothers can do it without ever meeting their young. Take the field cricket Gryllus pennsylvanicus. A female cricket isn't exactly a caring mother. Once she lays her eggs, she abandons them to their fate. But amazingly, she can also…
February 8, 2010
The English language is full of metaphors linking moral purity to both physical cleanliness and brightness. We speak of "clean consciences", "pure thoughts" and "dirty thieves". We're suspicious of "shady behaviour" and we use light and darkness to symbolise good and evil. But there is more to…
February 7, 2010
These are rock hyraxes or dassies. They may look like guinea pigs, but they're in an entirely different order of mammals. It's sometimes said that they are the closest living relatives of elephants. However, some scientists would dispute that sirenians - the manatees and dugongs - are more closely…
February 5, 2010
Toads are an evolutionary success story. In a relatively short span of time, they diversified into around 500 species and spread to every continent except Antarctica. Now, Ines van Bocxlaer from Vrije University has uncovered the secrets of their success. By comparing the most home-bound toads…
February 4, 2010
National Geographic should have a 3-D animation up soon The pursuit of accurate dinosaur colours just turned into a race, and a heated one at that. Just last week, I wrote about a group of scientists who claimed to have accurately identified the colours of some feathered dinosaurs by…
February 3, 2010
[It's probable that only British readers will understand the joke in the headline. Everyone else: just pretend it's an uproariously funny pop-culture reference and we can move on.] This morning, the Times published a list of its 30 best science blogs and I'm incredibly honoured to be on it. Twice…
February 3, 2010
Nominations for the Research Blogging Awards 2010 are now open. These awards are designed to recognise "the best of the best" when it comes to posts about peer-reviewed journal articles. Any blog that discusses peer-reviewed research is eligible for nomination, and the winners will be determined…
February 3, 2010
"That is Shadowfax. He is chief of the Maeras, lords of all horses, and not even Theoden, King of Rohan, has ever looked on a better. Does he not shine like silver, and run as smoothly as a swift stream?" - Gandalf In the Lord of the Rings, Gandalf rides upon a magnificent white stallion called…
February 2, 2010
In Western films, the gunslinger that draws first always gets shot. This seems like a standard Hollywood trope but it diverted the attention of no less a scientist that Niels Bohr, one of history's greatest physicists. Taking time off from solving the structure of the atom, Bohr suggested that it…
February 2, 2010
   No, this doesn't have Flash or a camera either. Nice text resolution, though...This post is long overdue. It has now been over two weeks since ScienceOnline'10 and the withdrawal symptoms (along with the SciPlague and jet-lag) have now subsided. I've already talked about how much I enjoyed…
February 1, 2010
The streams of Trinidad and Tobago are home to the most unexpected of landscape gardeners. They're guppies - tiny and beautifully coloured fish, just an inch or so long. Without tools or plans, they shape the environment around them, tweaking everything from the numbers of different species to the…
January 31, 2010
This, sadly, isn't part of the South African series. We weren't quite lucky enough to see any hunting dogs there. For that, I had to make a trip to London Zoo yesterday. They were worth the price of admission in themselves though. To me, these are the most beautiful of Africa's predators. They…
January 30, 2010
This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. Look into the oceans past the sharks, seals and fish and you will find the tiny phytoplankton. These small organisms form the basis of life in the seas but if their populations get to big, they can also…